Nerd Wallets!

I decided to make myself a new wallet. There were some problems with the old one, and the ones I could buy didn't have what I wanted. 

The Old Wallet

My old wallet was the first one I actually made myself. Doing my best to be a faithful nerd, I decided to make it entirely out of Duct tape, because what nerd doesn't want a Duct Tape wallet. In fact, the wallet it replaced was a Ducti-brand Duct Tape wallet that I got as a gift. But I wanted to make one for myself, and so I did. 

It only took a few hours, and there wasn't much forethought. Really all I had thought out was how long I'd have to make the pieces of tape so that the fold could hold money. And that's literally all I had thought about. So a few hours later all I had was a foldable pocket for cash, only to realize that I also wanted to carry around my ID and credit cards and the like. Whoops. 

Some ad-hoc planning later and I eventually figured out how to make pockets. I wrapped some tape sticky-side-out around a credit card, and then just stuck the card in the wallet where I wanted a pocket. Voila! Instant pocket. Problem solved.

But, it's not lasting. The Duct tape is wearing away -- there are some holes around the corners and the stickiness is beginning to rub off on my credit cards and whatever else is also in my pocket. And I had kinda jammed too many cards into my afterthought pockets. So I wanted to make a new wallet with the following goals:

• Not made of Duct Tape so that sticky thing doesn't happen.
• RFID-blocking so I don't need a special sleeve for my ID
• An external pocket so I don't have to open my wallet to show the bus driver my bus pass
• Enough pockets to fit all the cards I actually use in my wallet.
• A high degree of nerd factor where possible.

The New Wallet

I must say, this is a pretty freakin sweet wallet. I was poking around for tape in my closet and I stumbled upon one of my boxes of aging computer parts. Inside, there was a bag of connectors that had never been used and it hit me. 2 parallel ATA cables could be used to make the wallet. Hell yes.

The dimensions worked out almost perfectly. It turns out the length of a standard PATA cable from Asus is about twice the length of a wallet. So, I got crackin. I hacked away at the connectors so I just had the cable, cut the PATA cables in half, and ironed them flat. Yes, I ironed plastic & copper because THAT IS HOW I ROLL.

Once I was convinced the PATA wallet concept could work, I actually did a bit of designing. I played a bit with paper prototypes to see what kinda size I could make and where I could put pockets. I tried to mimic my old wallet as much as possible, because I do like it. But I also planned out where each of the cards in my current wallet would go before I made the pockets. Which I feel might be a bit obsessive. But I didn't want to end up with not enough pockets or some other glaringly obvious omission at the end. Not again, anyway.

Without going into the extreme detail of its construction (which may only be interesting to me) I managed to get everything I wanted. I did some fancy stitch work with needle & thread to hold everything together. The pockets are made of a different, lightweight material I cut out of a free blanket bag I stole from the Company Meeting. The horizontal pockets on the inside of the wallet are also lined with aluminum foil because early tests showed that the copper in the cables alone weren't enough to fully shield the RFID card. But, they're tastefully hidden inside the pocket, so it's functional and fashionable!

The result is one sturdy, fairly lightweight wallet. That is also UBER AWESOME.

I didn't think of everything, however. After the first day of use, a problem became apparent. The ends of the wallet still had exposed copper (which I thought was cool) but it was rough to the touch, and would bend and get caught in my pocket. I considered doing some fancy stitch work to put some material over the end, but instead, I decided to go with a bit of nostalgia. 

As a bit of a homage to my first wallet, I put some black Duct Tape over the ends. Problem solved.

A Proper Vacation, For Once.

Just got back from a great weekend in San Diego. Mid to high 70's, a cloudless Saturday at the beach getting a tan and a beautiful sunset after strolling around Balboa park on Sunday. It was a lot to do in a weekend, and in my usual "get there first - plan things later" method of vacationing, I owe a great debt of thanks to Mignon & Chi, who always knew the cool thing to do next, even if they had trouble figuring out how to get there.

Leaving was tough. This was the weather I missed. These were the people I missed. How could I go back to Seattle? I was beginning to think I had failed.

I had failed because the point of this vacation was to reinvigorate me. Seattle has had an absolutely shitty winter. The holidays ruined my drive at work -- either I was at work struggling without the aid of my coworkers who were on vacation, or I was on vacation having all my energy sapped out of my by family interaction. I was burnt out from being at work, and from being away from work. For my productivity, and for my sanity, that needed to be fixed.

I needed another vacation. A break from work that, for once, also included a break from being stressed. So, I booked a weekend trip to San Diego, to clear my head, regain my sanity, and be more ready to get shit done at work.

Also, Mignon was bugging me to visit.

As I was sitting on the plane back to Seattle, awaiting it to take off, it had appeared that I simply hadn't gotten that hat trick. Yes, it was an amazing time, I had cleared my head, regained my sanity, and truly enjoyed myself. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back to work -- to go back to Seattle. To go back to the cold, the rain -- away from the beaches, the sunsets, the stars, the close friends.

The fact that my return had become an unwanted one only further eroded the work ethic I had attempted to rebuild.

But, the flight was 2 and a half hours. That's plenty of time for a man to think. This particular brand of thinking involved a $5 rum & coke and a bunch of Texas Hold 'em on my iPhone. Two things hit me. One: Meg did a pretty damn good job of teaching me how to play poker. Two: This was just a vacation high. It will fade, and hopefully overall I'll still have been a bit rejuvenated from the experience.

When I got off the plane, the familiar & cold Seattle air hit my skin once again. Except, to my surprise, it felt oddly... refreshing. Pretty damn good, actually. It was like waking up after a full night's sleep. The impact of it intensified once I got out to my car. Instead of the oppressive, omnipresent cold that I had left, the cold was now reduced to a belligerent bully who nobody likes but no one has stood up to yet. And now that I was back, I was ready to kick its ass.

I drove home full speed, with the windows down. A passing sign reported the temperature to be 37 degrees. I laughed and drove faster.

Turns out I hadn't failed after all. I'm back, and the troubles I left here only a few days ago are all pissant douchebags in need of a solid ass kicking. And, instead of just ditching and going to another party, I'm ready to put up my dukes and defend this one.

So: work, weather, whatever -- bring it on. I'm ready to do what needs to be done.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This is what it looks like outside our cabin. It is snowing. Quite a
bit, actually.

There were plans to go hit the mountain, but the folks font want to so
that while snow is coming down. So we instead stay indoors. I don't
think I've left the house since my friends were here. Fun!

Before/After

Tada! This is what I do at airports. At least the ones I show up to
hours early because I'm afraid the wearer will make the roads hard for
the bus to get me there on time only to have the flight constantly
delayed while I'm at the airport.

Actually, after taking this picture I discovered my new beer had a fly
in it. I didn't think that actually happened. But apparently it does.

Woohoo unwinding by myself!

Snow Day

Lots of snow today. It was supposed to come yesterday, but so much for
that.

It's weird because this is not like the other places I've had to deal
with snow; and this is dealing with it in a different way entirely.

Normally, I go to the snow. Wait from afar to have it fall, wait for
them to clear the roads, and then go to the snow. It also means that
most times I'm around snow it's intended to be a vacation. So snow
means no work.

Also, in the event that it does snow in Tahoe, this never really
changes our plans. Sure, we can put chains on the tires, but we're not
inhibited from going out at all except that one time where we got
snowed in. But that was a really bad storm. Today was not bad by those
standards but Seattle came to a standstill.

Busses were reroute or cancelled. Lots of cars were spinning out along
the freeways. At least two restaurants on my street never opened. The
commute issue caused massive amounts of MSFT employees to work from
home: excessive load on the servers then made it horribly slow to get
anything done.

It annoys me that Seattle can't deal with snow. I think it might me
more of how the city handles it rated than how the residents do.

Anyways. I need to pack. Hopefully there won't be commute issues
getting to the airport so by the end of tomorrow I can be somewhere
that oat horrified of snowfall.

How Not to Party

I have lots of little voices in my head. Probably not literally, but there are a number of different perspectives I see on a given situation at once, each of them trying to influence what action I take. So it's easy enough to personify these perspectives, give them voices, and then view my thought process as a bunch of dwarves brawling, because that would be awesome.

One of the whinier dwarf voices is that of Doubt. Always asking "what if". Like you gave a chipmunk caffeine and and inherent fear of life and just let it talk endlessly. Everything I face there's a part of me that tries to think a few steps ahead, at how things could possibly go wrong, as proof that I shouldn't do anything, because the worst is inevitable, and I don't want the worst, do I?

This is especially true when I'm dealing with loads of other people. Like, for instance, at a party. Perhaps a winter party with a bunch of coworkers at a golf club at a fancy town in the hills just south of Bellevue. One where everyone comes dressed up nicer than usual because it's not just a party -- it's a dinner party.

Now, in this situation, I'm surrounded by people that I want to have a positive view of me in whatever context I consider them to be a part of. I want folks I consider friends to view me positively by the metric I view friends. I want coworkers to see me in a bit more presentable, professional light. And, for people I don't know, I want to be polite, cordial, and even witty, because I haven't quite decided which context I want them to view me in yet.

A party of this size has folks in all sorts of contexts. And it drives that caffeinated dwarf chipmunk of Doubt absolutely bonkers.

I want to relax and have fun. But I do that with friends, not with coworkers. Do I tell them stories of my day? No, that could go wrong, and why would you want to do that anyway they're coworkers. What if I say "fuck"? Oh heaven's no don't do that people will be offended. Jokes? Maybe but keep it tasteful -- no racial stuff, no sexy stuff, in fact, no jokes might be best after all.

The result of all this is an extra layer of thinking. Of debating if I should say what popped into my head or not. It's not a trivial amount of effort to do, so it's quite taxing. And worse yet, this is all in a setting that's under the guise of being a party, where you relax and have fun, and spend time with friends. And instead, I'm tense, very self-aware, and talking work talk with coworkers because I know that domain is easier to tread without negative consequence.


I have two ways out of this. The first is easy: bring friends. With enough folks around me that know me well enough, Doubt shuts the hell up because it's really got nothing to say. And then if some coworkers stray into the conversation, no worries, I'm already having a fun time, they can masquerade as friends in my head if it keeps the momentum of the evening going.

The alternative is a bit more difficult. It requires a different dwarf to step in and bitchslap Doubt across his puny face. Because he's sick of hearing Doubt's shit -- Doubt's all talk and no action. This new doubt is Boldness, and it does indeed help if Boldness has had a drink or two before he tries brawling with other dwarves and talking louder than he realizes.

The gist of Boldness is to just tell Doubt to shut the fuck up, your wining is only making this worse, and there's no fun to be had if you just sit on your ass and do nothing. A man of action, Boldness wants to do things which can't have all their possible negative consequences enumerated.

Unfortunately, this year Boldness didn't offer much more than talk. Last year, friends helped, and Boldness got me to come alive and have tons of fun with the folks I work with. This time round, he tried, but (a) I had less to drink and (b) there was no clear idea of what benign mischief I could cause that would liven the party up. Also, there were just fewer friends. That hardly helped.


The one saving grace of the evening was the afterparty. A short drive to a coworker's house, with a friend and a number of people I don't really work with. A bit of time sharing embarassing stories, sexy hip moves, and rocking out to "Man I Feel Like a Woman". That's fun. That's a party.

Quick update

This trip deserves a much longer Blog entry, but all I have time for is a short one.

Today was the result of poor planning, of poor common sense. The idea of extending my trip a few days was that it would give me a few extra days in the Bay Area to hang with friends, and also because it would save me about $100 on airfare. Win-win.

But then that leaves today. It's a Monday, and I'm in Berkeley. It's one of my days that I get to spend with friends, in theory. But everyone's got posters and projects, midterms and essays, or they have a job. Everyone is busy with things to do, because in the normal world people get things done on Monday, despite their laziness screaming at them that it's a lot of work and napping is a lot more rewarding.

So I once again find myself with time to waste. I sleep in. Hit up one of my favorite spots for lunch. And all my elaborate time wasting leaves me at about 12:30pm with 5 or so hours to go before friends can hang out, and they've figured out that I'm not a student anymore, so I can't get free wireless around campus. Bugger.

The result is a very long afternoon spent at a cafe. I got a bit of work done -- some design work that, though I hate working on vacations, I really should have done a while ago. Then I began to play a game, but it didn't feel right. That's about as well as I can describe it. Slacking off with mindless agmes didn't seem like the right thing to do.

I instead spent my time on other projects that I had neglected. A bit of graphics work. A bit of HTML & CSS on the next rev of my website -- mostly proof of concept stuff but it's working well enough to actually use. I'm impressed. And pleased with myself. ">

I don't know what it is about my surroundings, but there's something psychologically empowering about being in Berkeley. It's probably just a mental block or something I have about pursuing the things I want to do while i'm in the confines of my family's household. It's not a good thing -- but it's good to know it's a thing.

Anyway. Now it's friend-hang-out-time.

2 therefore n? as in November?

I'm on track so far. Which is easy considering it's been 2 days so far.
I managed to have vegetarian for dinner last night, so bonus there, but I only managed until about 7pm without eating, rather than going through the night hungry. Probably a good choice, as it was pretty rough towards the end.

Also: cardio workout yesterday and balance & quad endurance today. And I'm ahead on my word count.

Tomorrow will tax me, because as of yet, I was getting everything done precisely because I had no work to do. But tomorrow, I have work to do.

Here's to hopin'.

November Targets

A bit late, but here's what my plans are for this month:

• Complete NaNoWriMo. Big goal.
• Video games only if I'm ahead on my word count. This will absolutely suck.
• Eat Vegetarian with 2 exceptions: Thanksgiving & potentially Saturdays. Bonus if I manage to be vegetarian on Saturday as well. Oh, also, I'm going to say fish qualifies as vegetarian cuisine.
• Fast on Sunday. Sunrise to sunset, bonus if I manage to sleep sunday night without eating.
• Daily workouts, 3 a week will be cardio. Bonus if I get more than 3 days with cardio workout.
• Big TV off after 11pm. I'll either read or write after then.
• Meditation 3 times a week? I think so. I need to get that skill back.
• Be more social? I don't know how I can quantify this. But somehow.

Let's go november.

Like New Years Resolutions, but earlier.

I need to change a lot of things about my life. The more I think about it, the more distinct the image of who I want to be becomes. And the more I realize how that is not like me.

The biggest difficulty with my goal is I want it to be sustainable. I've had smaller goals that I've reached, only to go back on them in the long run. Things like a target weight, an exercise regimen, cooking a real meal once a week, forcing myself to try new things, and being more social than I perceive myself to be. In my first year in Seattle, I did all of these things, and I felt good about having done them, but did not keep them up. And now I find myself doing none of these things, and I'm rather unhappy with myself about each of these things, but not so strongly as to bring about a change of habits.

I'm in a rut.

A look back on situations I'm doing differently now:

• Work. Then: In around 10, leave by 5:30. My working hours revolved around my life and whatever activities I did outside of work. Now: I'm in earlier, I go home later. I'm focused more on what work I've finished than how much work I've done. 
• Ultimate. Then: I played 2 or 3 times a week, mostly pickup, but always regular. Now: I have a team, but we don't practice. I don't make it out to lunch games anymore. I play once a week, at best.
• Weeknights. Then: Freakin busy. Dancing Mondays, Thai Tuesdays, Puzzle Wednesdays, Cooking Thursdays, and Drinking Fridays. Now: Just the Fridays. The rest of my weeknights are TV shows or video games.
• Weather. Then: The weather didn't phase me. It was even a bit exciting when the rain began, because it's really not something I'm used to. Now: I'm distrustful of sunny days, as they seem to tease me of what it could be like all the time, but isn't.

I don't think these are all unrelated changes, but they all stem from a common cause. I wanted the real world to be a better version of college. My first reaction when the real world met my idea of what the real world should be was to change the real world. A rare few of these changes have held (Friday drinking and a general atmosphere of socialness amongst my coworkers being the only one that comes to mind). 

And then, after a while, it's hard to keep the momentum going. Especially when there's such little positive reinforcement for my efforts. I stop trying as hard. And as a result, I see what was likely to be the outcome anyway, for much less effort. And the cycle repeats. I'm not getting any better at Ultimate, why keep playing. I'm not accruing a posse of friends that I feel comfortable with asking to hang out with at the drop of a hat, nevermind finding a handful of people I could genuinely trust. I'm not getting used to crap for weather.

And so I sit. Locally trying to optimize my reward per effort has gone from an active social life to me & an Xbox. And I'm genuinely unhappy about it.

That is who I am right now. The uphill climb to who I want to be has had a bit of a landslide and brought me back down here. And while there's a chance that route would work if I simply dug deep and gave it another go, I'm thinking I'll try a different route this time.

If I don't like reality as I perceive it, and changing reality has failed, all that's left is to change my perception of that reality. Then the only thing that can stop me from creating that change is myself. I'm hoping I'll be easier to change than the rest of the world has proven to be. 

I haven't quite figured out what I want to change, but I've gotten a timeline. By the end of next week I'll have a list of things to do different, of better ways to spend my time than I'm spending them now. And then November will be when it kicks in. All the changes, all at once, for one month. 

Wish me luck.

Trust My Decisions

So I think I am holding out on writing on all my other topics until it's NaNoWriMo . But Political stuff is neither fiction, nor will it be as relevant for the majority of November. So here it is.

All the issues in the current presidential election can be narrowed down to one question: Who do you trust to make a decision on the right thing to do in a given situation? While quite vague, these concepts of trust and decision making are a deep part of our government and show themselves across the entire spectrum of experiences in our society.

Let's take an obvious example. You find a lost puppy. It happens to be found beneath a sign telling you who to call if you find this puppy. The Right Thing to do here is relatively obvious. Call the number, give the puppy back, everybody is happy. No laws exist to tell you what to do in this situation, because the government trusts that you'll do the Right Thing so much, that it's not even worth their effort to punish you if you don't. Here the answers are easy, the solutions simple, and each individual is trusted with the decision.

Now for a greyer and more touchy example: abortion. Regardless of its legality, trying to determine what the Right Thing to do is in this situation is one that's hotly debated. Somehow, a woman who does not wish to have a child finds herself pregnant. Whether it be from a failed contraceptive or from, heaven forbid, something as grim as sexual assault. Whichever path got her here, she's now in an ugly situation, and she will do whatever she thinks is the Right Thing.

That is, if we trust her to. Pro-Life supporters don't think that this is a decision that she can handle on her own, so they want laws that explicitly say what the Right Thing is (in their case, that she must carry the baby to term) and force her to do that Right Thing. Pro-Choice advocates do trust the woman to consider what's best for her and her child, and let her choose what she believes to be the Right Thing to do.

On a bigger scale, we have things like our current electoral college process for elections. There are really only 538 votes cast in an American election that hold any weight at all on who becomes president. The popular vote, the ideological one vote per person is tallied, but each state decides how the popular vote will influence the electoral vote. Some states have it all for the most popular, some have it split proportionally, and some electoral votes are completely independent of their popular counterpart. This was designed so that, if the populous didn't vote for the Right Thing on election day, the electoral votes could fix it so that the Right Thing did happen and the right candidate was elected.

This is what happened in 2000. The popular vote determined Al Gore to be the best man for the job, but apparently everyone who thought that was the Right Thing was wrong. Phew. That was a close one.

And with another election in front of us, every issue is another version of this question of trust. Do you trust the banks to regulate themselves and only give loans to folks who can pay them back? Do you trust agencies & corporations to provide equal treatment to same-sex couples as they do heterosexual couples?  Do you trust employers to give equal opportunity and equal pay to women as they do men?

Whoever we elect this year will be in the position to make these decisions. I think Obama will choose what I view to be the Right Thing in these situations. Substantially moreso than McCain. I can only hope that as a nation, we decide this strong enough to make sure the electoral votes agree that this is the Right Thing to do.

More time, less time.

I'm definitely not doing as much after work nowadays. It used to be I
had a crazy social schedule. Mon night salsa, Tues night Thai food,
wed night puzzle, thur night baking, Friday night unwinding. And amid
all that I had energy and focus to work on my website.

But I don't have most of that to do after work anymore. In fact, I
really just en up working a bit more because of it. So when I get home
it's hard to work on the stuff that I've already spent all day working
on. And fir some reason blogging doesn't have the same expressive
relief it once did, so that fallen by the wayside as well.

Which is sad. I really do have some great ideas of things I want to
write and things for my website.

Maybe I'm just saving it all up for NaNoWriMo.

Idea seeds

There are a couple of things that ive wanted to write about, but the
time has escaped me. When there is time, hopefully I can flesh out my
views on:

Communication.
Gender and minority issues.
Things I unequivocally enjoy.
Trust: personally and in the media.
Family: birthright or social function?
The future of the Internet.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I can remember of the
top of my head. I'll refer back to this list when I want to write
about something but need an idea seed.

No hangin' out.

Sometimes I have a busy day at work. Today was one of those days.

Sometimes I get a lot of work done. Today was almost one of those days.

The reason: process. I have 2 bug fixes, but I can't call em done
until they go through a process that proves that my change isn't
adding more bugs than it's removing. A lengthy process. One with many
moving parts.

For the last few days, these parts have failed to move entirely,
leaving me with work I can't really do any more work on, but that
isn't actually finished. So I loop in a bunch of other people in an
attempt to get this process machine running again. Other coworkers are
having the same problem with their machines. It all points to a
problem external to ourselves: the engine is fine, but you can't use a
combustion engine in a vaccuum.

So I call the folks with all the oxygen and say, "Hey. Oxygen folk. We
need some." But instead of giving us oxygen, they just kinda look
around and say, "we've got oxygen here. What's the problem?"

This goes on for an hour, a time that would kill anyone who actually
did need oxygen.

And when you finally convince them that yes, you do need air, the task
of giving it to you is passed off to another person who doesn't truly
understand that not giving this to us immediately is stopping us from
running our process and getting actual work done. Why is this how it
works?

Because that's their process. And they've got all the oxygen.

The moon doesn't count.

Even on a super clear night, after a beautiful day of cloudless sun,
there are no stars in Seattle.

This bugs me.

Not all thinking is good.

This was a tough week. Fairly draining. I did have some fine PieMo
merch to help me get through it, but that only does so much.

Literally 8 bugs resolved this week. That's madness for me. I have 8
more to go over the next 3 weeks, but they really are harder ones.
Regardless of difficulty I was just on fire about being motivated to
get my shit done.

But I'm drained. And I need to be as motivated in the weeks to come.
So for the sake of my job I need to do fun things this weekend to
energize me to work.

But I don't tend to do that anymore. None of the folks I know in
Seattle ask me to do things- they're just not that kind of friend to
me. And I've become tired of bugging them to hang out with me. So the
result is me, at home, all weekend.

It's crap.

And then work serves as a relief: after a 2 day haiatus, I'm finally
surrounded by people who want to talk to me. My occupation shouldn't
serve ad my only social outlet. But I do need folks to kim me in the
pants once in a while to do what's really best for me.

I'm going to be diappointes by this weekend. I know it.

blogging powers for good.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/09/help_find_hannah_upp.html Friend of a friend is missing in NY. If you've seen something, let the authorities know.

story premise

I had this great idea for a story yesterday. The basic premise is this:

How do you tell the difference between something you remember and something you dreamed? Really, the only major difference is memory continuity -- you wake up one day, and have two distinct memories of something having just happened. Either your last day ended and you went to bed, or you had some adventure that we believe was generated by your subconscious. Most of the time your brain figures it out with the following logic: one means you should be in bed, which you are, and the other means you should be running away from Ninjas in china or something because you stole their prized statue of a green monkey. It could happen.

But during most dreams, you believe everything at face value. And you seem to lack the memory of having just gone to bed. Somehow this continuity isn't questioned.

Oh man i'm spinning off a couple of different ideas about dreams, all story worthy.

• Original idea: Every one of your dreams ends the same, you are somehow tricked into pushing a red button that sends you back to the waking world and destroys your memory of the dream. Like Groundhog Day but with a sinister puppetmaster toying with you every night to make you push this button. Except you notice a girl beginning to recurr in your dreams. Each time, it's her trying to stop you from pushing the button, as this dream world needs your help desperately, but so many times you end up pushing the button anyway (which usually erased the memory of her, but she keeps appearing in the bits you remember) The puppetmaster of this dream world is doing something bad, and you can stop him if only you could break this horrible cycle of red-button pressing. 
• Spin off 1: Every dream begins the same as well. You wake up from your bed and do something. But this memory is so mundane that it is lost.
• Spin off 2: What do sleepwalkers think when they wake up? Or hungover people when they don't entirely remember how they got there either? This seems to break my theory of memory continuity, as folks are still just as easily able to tell what was a memory and what was a dream. Well, maybe notsomuch with the drinking. hm...

So yeah i really only have one idea. but I like it. I should figure more out.

TROUTED!!!

Really? Is this a real thing?

Apparently so. I got an IM from someone named opinionatedtrout, asking simply "Would you like the keys to a shiny new Austrailia?"

The cleverly reworded Dr. Horrible reference was enough to get me interested. I responded that getting one certainly would dry my tears. To which they simply responded "sure, why not?" and let the conversation go silent.

I've come to terms with the fact that the internet is a fairly weird place. Just sitting idly on it, there is a chance I'll get IM'd by a stranger, or by a bot trying to phish for my information, or perhaps by someone I know but don't actually want to talk to. Most of these are simply ignored. But normally when other folks start a conversation with me, and I engage, I expect them to have something more to say. Well, unless the start was simply "hey. hey. what's up. not much, u. not much."

So I did a search for it. Apparently Professor Chaos learned how to program an AIM chat bot that would start conversations between strangers. And that's called trouting. or something.

Anyways. I figured it out. What was a bot was now a kid from SoCal. Who hadn't seen Dr. Horrible. So I sent 'em the link.

My heart's still I'm Berkeley

It's pretty flippin awesome here. I swear I haven't seen a cloud for
my whole California trip.

Everyone says I should return to California. I'm inclined to believe
them.

2 days at home: still alive.

So I've been thinking. I'm not quite sure why I chose now to come back for a week and a half. I mean, to my credit, I am getting to enjoy cloudless sun while Seattlers are dealing with rain. The typical, constant, rain. And I do get to have one day off for free without even taking a vacation day, on account of Labor Day being one of my vacation days. But, everyone in the south bay is working. A good chunk of folks have already gone back to their respective colleges. Well, namely Meg. But all the Berkeley folk have also gone back because for them the schoolingtimes have already begun again. This leaves me with loads of time during the day and nobody to see. I do hang with my brother, which is cool, but essentially it leaves me with the whole Everyone-At-Home-On-Different-Computers dynamic that I deliberately left. In a house with the air conditioner cranking out the cold like it's got something to prove. And a dude who still hasn't learned how to chew with his mouth closed. Gah I hate it here. But I've been fighting it. On Sunday I had a great day. Country Potato Wrap at Cafe Adrias. Mini golf at Golfland, for 7 holes in one (41 total score for 18 holes. Pretty freakin epic). Then badminton with Laura (cheapo set: $60) during which we destroyed all 3 birdies that came with it. Also some cheap-ass ball game that amounted to little more than a colorful plastic & rubber ball version of throwing soap-on-a-rope at a towel rack. Needless to say, we played that once. Mostly because my dad wanted to play it. Then it was back home for dinner & birthday stuff. I know what you're thinking: "Oh my, is it your birthday? I totally forgot, but will now act like I did remember." Or the more attention-paying of you will be thinking, "Wait. Your birthday is in early July. Did your parents forget this badly, or did you concoct some scheme to convince them that yet another year had passed and they owed you even more gifts?" Well, neither is true. Turns out, when I didn't send them a wish list of what I wanted for my birthday, they couldn't figure out what to get me, so didn't get me anything. This was so I could come down and celebrate my birthday with them. Oh, and also, they got almost nothing from the list I did eventually send them. So no list next year. They can just deal with it. I still haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of the week. I'm thinking I'll head up to Berkeley for 4 or 5 days or so. Probably Wed or Thur through until Monday. Not sure where I'll sleep, but it'll be better than the crap futon that I'm on now. Oh yeah, that's right. I don't actually have a room to sleep in here. So I'm sleeping on the old futon in the old computer room. Lovely. But tomorrow afternoon will be a pool party at Lisa's. That will be fun. Yay for that.

Long day.

Up since 5 or so.
Pretty uneventful flight.
Afternoon was an awesome BBQ.
Dinner was fancy Italian.

So tired now.

A year and a day

They say you should try new things for a year and a day. 366 days of
commitment and then you can reflect on your experience in its
entirety and see if you want to keep with it.
Today is that day. I've been at Microsoft living in downtown Seattle
for a year an a day. As I left the office today I cleaned up a bit.
Left my desk nice and tidy. Tied up all the loose ends of my work to
be sure it's well taken care of while I'm away in California. It felt
like I wasn't going to come back, and it was actually goodbye.
There are lots of things to think about. Do I like what I'm doing? Do
I like where I'm living? Do I like where my life is going in general?
Am I happy? All so seemingly simple but fairly complex to answer
accurately.
I love what I'm doing now. I've wanted to write code for the browser
since I was little. It's also not the backend work I was doing before,
where I was truly lost. This week I kicked ass figuring out some
complex rendering issues and javascript compatibility problems. Stuff
that users can see in weeks or months, not never.
And Seattle's not that bad a place to live either. There is a vibrant
Ultimate community, there's tons of nice people, and I can almost
always find something to so here. The weather does take some
adjustment, but I've been spoiled in that regard so far.
But there is something missing. I've been putting myself out there
trying to meet people, but after a year and a day I haven't really
made that strong of a connection with anyone. My fruitless pursuit of
ladies aside, the folks I hang out with in my free time are usually
limited to the single activity we share a common interest in.
It's not a blanketing true statement. I've gone to bars with the folks
I eat Thai food with. I've gone to parties with ultimate players. I've
gone to karaoke with coworkers. But it's limited to these group plans
where more often than not I need to organize them. It's not someone
calling me up because they're bored and wanna hang out.
My friends in Seattle are nowhere near as close to me as my friends in
California.
So things have come full circle: a year and a day. My trip to
California for the next week and a half will give me time to reconnect
with those I don't see, and to reflect on my chosen path. If I were to
never return to Seattle, I doubt it would pain me as much as if I were
never to return to California. But, to be fair, California has a
pretty sizable head start.
We shall see. California, here I come.

Boo on that

I had a stressful day.
Flight for California leaves on Saturday morning.
I haven't packed.
I have a day to finish 2 work items.

Tomorrow will suck.

It's my city -- it'll rain if it wants to.

Summer must be over. I have no problem with that.

I think the real trouble with the rains comes from the difference between expectation and reality. In California, the expectation is that it will be sunny. And if it does begin to rain, the expectation is that it won't be for long. Most of the time, that's spot on.

Coming from that mindset to one were it's raining almost all the time isn't easy. Although when I first came here a year ago, I didn't think it was so bad. I was told to expect rain, but the summer lingered. There was decent sun and warm days. It wasn't too bad. And when the rain & clouds finally did begin to set in, I was already off to a good start, because I had been expecting them for some time.

It really got to be bad in June. Because in my mind, June is summer. June + July + August = summer. Those are the three months that there will be good weather and it will absolutely happen. No question about it. And my summer mentality is essentially equivalent to California mentality: it can be crappy for a day but really there's no way it'll last longer than that.

Thinking that for a month of June rain was absolutely shitty. And for all but the 2 weeks in July where it was constantly nice, the clouds & bits of rain persisted.

Then there's today. It's still August. Still part of what I like to call "summer". And it rained. On & off, all day actually. But it had a different feel to it. The same feel that it did when I first got here and it did begin to rain. The "Ah, my arch-nemesis, I see we meet again," "I'll take you on, your bullets cannot harm me," "Is that the best you can do" kind of adversarial attitude I normally only associate with Ultimate.

Actually, that's one of the ways I fought it. I made the effort to play Ultimate today. It was pretty damn good, although I left early because I really do have tons of work to get done by Friday.

But yes. My expectation now is that I won't see the sun in Seattle for months. I can only hope daily battles with my arch-nemesis can keep me entertained until next Summer.

"Kicker" is a dangerous word

Last week, my product group shipped SV3, which is secret Microsoftese for our 3rd major update to the Office Live Workspace service. (For those untrained in Microsoftese, all the words are 3-4 characters, all capital letters, and probably a descriptive acronym whose original meaning has since been completely lost.) But point being, it's an important milestone, so time to celebrate.

On Friday, we had our ship party. Cake, beer, food, whathaveyou. The services world is great because we have these on the order of months rather than the order of years.

But today was the special Dev team treat. The Dev Manager, Sam, took us all out to lunch. And not just lunch--Thai food. 

I was really energetic for some reason. Part of it was because I was getting free Thai food for lunch. Part of it was also the fact that, including the Dev meeting right prior to lunch, there was going to be about 3 consecutive hours during the day where I got no actual work done. When I only have until Friday to get all my work done through the end of the month so I can go on vacation. But yes! Excited!

The lunch was good Fun. Oscar made a napkin-man out of the place settings. Julia made some ridiculous claim that I didn't set up David for like 5 consecutive "that's what she said" jokes at the last Friday Unwind, which I totally did. David agrees. I explained to Rick what a rickroll was. Good times.

When I was looking at the menu, my eyes were caught by the bottom of the drinks section. I had already ordered a Thai Iced Tea, but this drink sounded about 150% more awesome. It was called the Thai Tea Kicker. Just linger on that name for a moment: Thai Tea Kicker. It's like Chuck Norris just bitchslapped you while grinning and holding a tasty beverage. DON'T YOU WANT THAT BEVERAGE NOW?

Well needless to say my curiosity was piqued. So I read on. Oh, crap. Apparently it was an alcoholic drink. Because this was the Alcoholic Drinks section. Of the Drinks menu. Crap. Not only do I need a new menu now, but additionally I probably shouldn't try this new potentially balls-to-the-wall awesome drink, because it's about 12:30pm on a Tuesday. The story of this drink should have probably ended there.

But it didn't.

In passing I mention the drink to Rick, who was also entranced by its aura of awesome. "Well, maybe if we split one afterwards, that would be okay. Half of a drink's not going to get you ineber.. inebray.. drunk." I love it when more senior devs encourage me to do what my own internal detectors tell me is a Bad Idea.

So once our appetizers and main meal have come and gone, and others are ordering Fried Banana and Chocolate Raspberry-something, I order our Thai Tea Kicker. The waitress pauses. "That's an alcoholic drink." "Yes," I reply. After another moments hesitation she goes off to put in the dessert orders and bring Rick & myself back a tasty beverage. 

When it comes back, it almost looks like a Thai Iced Tea. The top looks the right color, but the rest looks like they've already mixed the sweet milk in with the tea part. Not quite so elegant, but I'm still looking forward to it. 

And then we taste it.

Ugh! Really? This is what I had been waiting for? It was as if Chuck Norris had dropped the drink on his foot, began hopping as he held his injured foot in his hands, only to slip on the now-all-over-the-floor crap beverage and hit his head on the nearby coffee table. There was simply too much alcohol in it. The alcohol dulled the bitter bite of the tea and all but muted the sweetness of the milk. And it didn't really replace it with any great flavor. Just This-Will-Get-You-Drunk-Quick fumes wafting out of a glass that wishes it were as good as Thai Iced Tea. At least if they had used cheaper liquor, or something sharper, then, while probably being a worse drink, I'd at least feel it was worthy of being named Kicker. 

As I told my old officemate Justin: I didn't find it to be bad exactly, it just wasn't an $8 cocktail. At best it was some half-assed concoction thrown together at one of the classier Ultimate parties that actually has liquor. If it was that kind of party setting, I would have finished it. But since it wasn't that tasty, and I did need to get some work done after lunch, I left the drink mostly untouched.

Rick didn't even give it a second thought. After his first sip, he simply remarked "Oh, that's terrible" and didn't want any more of it. I had 4 sips because I really wanted it to work.

My mind's still intrigued tho. It looks like if I want to have a good Thai-Iced-Tea based alcoholic drink, that I might need to figure out how to make one for myself...

Tales of Little Imporance

I'm sitting here, as I have before, and I will again, and as I am now, currently, at this very instant, without a good idea of what to write. It's hardly a foreign problem, although I'm sure this problem has been had while writing in foreign languages or foreign lands. I want to say something of interest, of relevance, of importance. But above all else, I don't want to say nothing. Nothing is as boring as nothing said. I thought for a moment. I've been in Seattle for almost a year. I've been at Microsoft for almost a year. There's at least a year's worth of stories that have happened to me. Something must have been interesting enough to be relevant to your interests. To be important enough for me to take the time to go through, remember it, chose an arbitrary order of words from a rather limited phrasebook to aptly describe that occurrence, and then put it on the internet. And actually, much like how you find love when you least expect it, all this writing about not having anything to write about has reminded me of a few excellent stories to tell. Potlatch with the GDGFK memorial team. The After Lunch Coffee Club. How I created the Friday Unwind. My overarching struggle to find a place in the world where I can't stand socially being out of college but academically couldn't be happier. Adventures with Nate & Coop, adventures to Sasquach with Diane. My perpetual quest to be a bit more religious but never finding time I want to dedicate to that pursuit. The Intern Game, or How I Stayed Up All Weekend Making Interns Do Puzzles. Then there are the Tales of Little Importance. I saw Casey on the bus today. Some random dude IM'd me. My left eyebrow aches just enough for it to be weird. These are the true secrets, the gems of our existance. Someone else can recount the stories -- they were there (or should have been, becuase it was probably awesome). Nobody knows the tiny little crazy things that bounce around in my head all day. Which don't make for interesting details. But they should make good stories. I'll tell you them later. I sleep now.

Memory's a funny thing

I found an old blog of mine yesterday. My first blog was an OpenDiary -- that's long gone since they only kept things around if you kept updating. That was also in an age where I backed up to my local disk in case something I put on the internet was lost. Ah, what an age.

Anyway. No, I'm talking about my Xanga, Which I seem to have used throughout the later years of high school. And despite all my last few entries being along the lines of "Sorry I haven't updated more often" and "You should really read my livejournal, I update that all the time", there's some quality content in there. Not only was I a struggling adolescent, but I was also a struggling adolescent with moments of literary genius. I was trying posts of different structures, different narrative tones, and an absurdly large amount of personification and metaphors. 

I still do the personification thing, but rarely. Metaphors are all but gone from my blog posts.

Well, actually, my blog posts have been gone as of late too. But this is a first step towards fixing that. Anyway.

Point being, I read through all of it and was up til like 4am. It was pretty awesome. There are some sweet quotes I salvaged that may once again see the light of day. But more than that it was amazing to read something from the perspective of a 17-year old me. I mean, of all the other people in the world, I'm really the only one who can truly understand the experience this writer is speaking from. Because I've walked in his shoes. Because they were also mine.

More amazing was the fact that my brain still stores all the memories I had from high school. All of it. Every single flippin detail. It just needs to be prodded to remember. Every little experience I wrote about I could almost relive as I read it. It was actually tough to read some of the bits about I had to go to Tahoe again for a goddamn week because my folks wanted to put me to work and--- GAH my parents suck. And if it weren't for the internet, I might've forgotten just how much they suck. I also could've done without remembering my senior prom. That was a house Tragedy with a side of Death Threat. 

Anyways. Point being: I need to write more about the mundane things. A: because once I lower the bar of blog topics to mundane things I'll have to get better at writing again to make them interesting. And B: because I might look back and see that this was the important part of my life that's worth remembering. 

Not really though. It's pretty mundane.

Weaksauce

I wrote this long entry about how cool I is to blog with pictures from
my iPhone, an then I go so fast the iPhone loses the email entirely.
Way to go, Apple.

Test

Let's see what happens.

Not Pants Steal

Aw snap. I'm a published video producer now. For one video. On YouTube. Remember when frat boys wronged Anna and she had a plan to get them back? Well, like a man balancing on a basketball with his head, it's now on YouTube. Enjoy.

Life was waiting for me.

Holy crap. I had my last undergraduate class, indeed my last academic-oriented class for a long time, on Tuesday. When class ended, the fun began. There was a champagne reception for graduating engineers in the Mining Building. I had 8 glasses of champagne with various cookies, treats, and other food-type dealies dipped in chocolate fondue style. It's good to graduate. After an hour of having dinner & playing Wii, I showed up all decked out in formalwear for my last Playa's Ball, the annual formal party for Cal Ultimate Frisbee. I talked with a lot of people. I had about 6 or 7 drinks. Squirt reminded me that kisses while intoxicated are roughly half as good (or less so) than sober smooches. Twice. I discovered that Mary is a naive romantic, just like Scott likes. I also, for the first time ever, drank so much that I puked. I was mostly helpless. Scott & Mary helped me home. Pradeep drove. I threw up some more, and went to bed. wherein, i peed. As the hours passed today, i slowly recovered. The more I recovered, the more i tried to test myself from the experience. Do I remember everything? Did I pass out? I do. I didn't. I did come to the realization that this is the college most people hear stories about. This is the kind of experience I have been wanting for the last four years. To momentarily lapse my sense of responsibility and the fear of embarrassment. To be out of control enough to require someone else to take care of me. Realizing that makes even the worst of it feel good. Altho I for-sure won't be doing it again anytime soon. damn.

lethargy trumps productivity.

I'm in my poetry class now, and for about the 3rd consecutive time I find myself paying absolutely no attention. But it's worse than that. For the last few weeks, since I dropped my software design class, I've been designing the user interface for a web-based team management site. And in lieu of paying attention in class, i've decided to work on it. But now i'm not even doing that, i'm just sort of looking at it, making changes, and being generally displeased with the appearance of it. Madeline leaves for Brazil today. We haven't spoken in weeks. It's a complicated situation made simple by the fact that now there really isn't much else to do but maintain. Perhaps revisit & rebuild in June, but no sooner. I forget how much hugs mean to me. I need to meet more girls who give good hugs. i'm done.

This is my first tryout of the new document system
I think this will be the new way to take notes in class with any wifi connection
Google is too good.


that is all.

the kitchen says my bread is molded

i'm having a case of the thursdays when I get to my car to drive to work this morning, i notice my left rear door is a bit sticky as I open it. I close & reopen it again, looking to see why it's sticky. Oh, look at that. there's some goop or something on my car door. sticky with white specks. weird. but wait, there's more. there's also a smattering of some of that goop all along the left side of my car, the side facing the street. Is there more of this stuff? I look a little more left and find loads more goop covering my left mirror and frozen dripping down my door. but there's so much of this stuff, it's yellow that's right. someone egged my car. I do a quick csi-themeatic analysis of the evidence and figure there were 3 eggs that hit my car -- one on my back door and two on my mirror. They were done drive-by style: I can tell by the pattern of splashed egg guts. There are some leftover chunks of shell on my hood. And it's all sticky. no biggie. there's no chance i'll find out who did it. and at the very least, some kids actually had fun late night in San Jose. heaven forbid. oh, and then on the way to work i spilled my drink on myself and didn't realize it until i asked myself "why does the underside of my leg feel warm? weird. oh well. ... wait, it shouldn't feel warm, should it? hmm..." crank it to eleven

you're going the wrong way

unfortunately all i seem to ever have time for is the long-story-short stories. Anyways, long story short, this past weekend was spent with Debbie in Redlands, and it was truly amazing. Working today felt a bit weird. It was back to the pre-weekend grind, except with the lingering memory of the weekend. Everyone acted like nothing had happened. Like they didn't know how awesome the weekend was. Well, i mean, they didn't. And it was an enjoyable secret to keep. like the inside joke that you can't help but laugh out loud too but it's too complex to explain. inside jokes rule.

much ado about

nothing. nothing. that's what i'm doing, and that's all i've done today. I've definitely had those moments when i'm just totally unmotivated, but this is going on being a whole day of no motivation. There is a meeting late in the day, which will in theory give me more focused work to do, but until then i'm really just having a no-brain day at work. until then, my thoughts: Google Checkout This doesn't make much sense to me. I don't see how this fits into aggregating the world's data. So really it's just another avenue for revenue. Which could be put to some good use. For instance, what if based on your purchase history, Google was able to recommend things you might like across various online stores instead of closed to a single amazon.com store? Better yet, leverage that Google database and incorporate things you've searched for, emails you've recieved, videos you've watched, etc etc etc. I love and hate this idea. ... hmm. i thought i had more points to make, but i guess not. it's a slow day.

well, i think you're crazy.

My office building has become mostly full. When I began here, the only two people in cubes were myself and some other guy named Jun who I had met at orientation. Now there's only 2 cubes free on the whole floor. When everyone gets excited, it gets pretty loud. So I've finally resorted to listening to music at work. Yeah, I really don't have much to post. I just needed a break from learning. That's right. Learning. I was assigned two projects when I came to VMware, both of which looked like something I had a reasonable amount of technical expertise in. However, this is what's known as Phase 0 of like a 6-phase process (where the second half is betas and release candidates) which is a nice way of saying we don't really know what we're doing yet, but we're trying to figure it out. Unfortunately in figuring it out the project keeps spinning off into realms of technology everyone knows will work great but which I've never used before. So I have to keep learning them, changing my design, and so on. It's odd. Designing software is less thought-intensive than development work. I like it, but I'm begining to miss the ability to actually create a program that does something rather than creating a design that looks like it should do something. But that comes next. Alright. I'mma go get myself a snack or something and try and get back to learning.

all your base-10 are belong to us.

I was thinking of my usual thought process and I came across the newfangled concept that there is no such thing as an absolute fact. Everything known to be certain is really only known based on some underlying context or bias. That old chestnut. An internal conversation ensued. "What about math? Math is always consistant." "Only within consistant axioms. What's 1+1?" "Two" "Why?" "Because that's what it means to add 1 to 1." "That's what it means to you. And to anyone using the standard meanings of both "one" and "plus"" "What?" "Let's say I make my own base-10 numbering scheme except each number is mapped to the name and symbol of the following number. For example, my '4' would be your '3'. Thus, '1' + '1' = '1'. " "That's ridiculous." "Better yet, keep the numbers & symbols, and just change the base. What's 1+1 in base-2? 10." "Base-2?" "Yeah, it's where you only have digits 0 and 1. not 2 or above." "Well that's a strange name." "Why's that strange?" "Because if all you knew was base-2 then you wouldn't have a concept of the number '2' to describe the base" "Interesting" "What do you call normal math?" "Base-10" "There isn't a single digit to describe 10? You use base-10 numbers to describe the base of a base 10 number?" "I suppose." "Why don't you do that for other bases, then, what makes 10 so special?" "Fine, we'll do it for other bases as well." "Good. Now what does that make base-2?" "Base-10."

time = $$

i never used to believe that time equals money. but it's true. i'm at work for x hours. for every hour i'm at work, i gain money. i travel around, and for every hour I travel, i lose money. everytime i eat, i lose money. unless I didn't pay for lunch. really, what I'd like to do is sit down and figure out when i should work, when i should travel, when i should sleep, etc, etc, etc. but the problem is i don't really have enough time. so i do ad-hoc things and i'm probably losing money. case in point: i slept in berkeley sunday and tuesday night. i drove to work. not only did i use gas instead of bart, but i had to pay the $3.00 to use the dumbarton bridge. I also spent $8.00 doing laundry (coin-operated machines are total rip-offs). so i've decided something. I'm not really going to be able to keep all my money. My hands aren't big enough, my grip isn't tight enough to keep it from paying for food, gas, and evil greedy gnomes. so i've decided instead of making this thing a battle between me getting money vs. losing it. it's now become a race to spend my money on fun things faster than i spend it on the needed things. so i bought two t-shirts. (1)(2)

what can I say, i'm a busy guy

that's right. I haven't been posting. I've been busy. "But Chris, the point of the schedule was that, despite being busy, you had a real schedule with real deadlines that you had to meet despite how important you thought what you were doing was" Who said that? Who? That's what I thought. Seriously, nobody has been on my case about writing. Nobody. It's not like you all said "oh yay, more chris writings! I can hardly wait until his next update of carefully arranged words, yum!" No. It seems to me you all laughed to yourself, rolled your eyes, condescendingly wished me good luck, and went back to sleep (behind my back, no less!) Shame, shame on you! You're letting me get away with this. It's people like you who let people like me get away with not writing. You should be ashamed. ok, i gg now, i got stuff to do.

it's late. it's really late. i saw debbie again tonight. it was the third time in two weeks. long story short, i'm the king of mixed signals. it was exactly what i wanted, exactly what i needed, but exactly what i was afraid of. this time after hugging we went back to her room and made out. i was trying not to get involved thinking "she doesn't need this -- she's about to go away again. gahhhh we agreed to keep in touch and have a quasi-open relationship. i know i'm just going to end up waiting for her. and now i get to deal with asking if she's found someone... i don't know. i wasn't cut out for this. she leaves in less than 4 hours. i'm tired. and i can still taste her Dr Pepper kisses and her scent still lingers on my clothes. ok. i'm passing out now.

what a night i spent the evening at debbie's. it was a doubl fature of mean girls and when hrry met sally. in that order. it was good. we definitely spent pleanty of time talking before, during, and after the movis had started. that was really one of the best parts. she really listens to me and cares about what i have to say, and she asks the questions i ned to hear. it was good. the only thing that was better were her hugs at the end. man, does she give strong hugs. i felt so safe and secure there... i hated to leave. but it's 3am and i've got work tomorrow if onlly it were college i probably would have stayed over. sleeping on the floor or whatnot. because damn, i really didn't want it to end. but it had to and so it did.

late for my first post.

oh snap. it's 3:40pm. I swear I was thinking to myself at 1pm, "yay italy winning at futbal, double yay watching tv at work, oh yeah i have to write a post, i will when I get back to my desk." which did happen before 3pm, but unforutnately by the time i got back that thought had been long buried by other, more recent thoughts. anyhoo weekend was good. saturday i played sticks, a game I haven't played in over a year. it was ridiculously fun. then I went to my brother's graduation party, which was really for my parents. As soon as I walked in I was paraded around to say hi to everyone -- old family friends, old family, and people who I don't know but who clearly really know me. By the end, I had a headache, and they ran out of eggrolls. Boo on no eggrolls. I spent practically all of sunday starting, playing, and beating a game known as FutureTactics for PS2 (my brother won a mini PS2 at his all-night on-campus graduation party. you know, the one where they have fun stuff to do all night immediately after graduation to prevent you from going out and finding booze and driving drunk or other fun things.) It was my first turn-based fighting game. And it was the first video game I'd played in a while. It was addicting, but only for a day. one hour late. close enough. "Weighed down with words too over-dramatic"

written on Bart

Hey, hey. okay. what about, i mean, remember that time when you were like "what do you wanna do" and i was like "i wanna write everyday" and you were like "awesome, you should totally do it" and i was all "yeah i totally will" man, we were so baked. I've thought about writing. I really have. On and off for these last few weeks. But I haven't. That's a fact. I've been trying to think of a schedule on which i could regularly update without it making a huge negative impact on my schedule. And I think that's currently just been a stall tactic for me not writing. So here's my new pledge to you, the faithful^* reader. 1. Daily updates to my blogs Monday - Friday by 3pm. I plan on doing this daily after lunch, but sometimes lunches can go pretty late in the afternoon... Also, these will be small nonfiction updates. Don't expect much 2. New writings at midnight on Mondays. By the end of monday night I'll have something new written. It'll be pretty substantial. Like a Dan Brown chapter. 3. Published writings to my blogs every Wednesday. This could just be an extra-long post or it could actually be the thing i wrote for Monday. It depends on what I feel like publishing. So really all you care about is #1 and #3, but it's good to have my personal deadline of #2 written down. I'm hoping I can talk with Olivia or Debbie and get some literary criticism between Monday and Wednesday. That or I might have to tweak the days a bit depending on my schedule/the schedule of my editors. "hey, do you kiss on the first date?"

summer plans

The Downcast I've never really felt in the mood for blogging when I've been at my computer. But I have spent a substantial amount of time away from my computer with the urge to do something more than just travel from place to place. The result is numerous posts to my Downcast blog. (I like the ring of Downcast Podcast as opposed to Downcast Audio Blog. Which will also be more suiting if I ever actually make a Podcast.) The Phone I also got a new phone. A black RAZR. As much as it's better than my phone in about every conceiveable way, it feels much less rugged. But then again a credit card always feels less rugged compared to a 6-inch-diameter steel ball. I've cuztomized it with a ThugMo background and a Code Monkey ringtone. And as much as I think the camera on the phone sucks to my 3-year-old camera, it does mean I always have a camera with me. So I'll probably take pictures more now. The Hair For those who haven't already found out, I cut my hair. That's it. It's short now. Although not that short. It's almost back to the way it was, although it still feels kinda long for the way it was. The only major difference now is that all those months with me combing it back and/or tieing it back have caused it's basic shape to change. My old side-part doesn't stay anymore. Now I have a weird M-shape to my hair if I don't comb it. But I think it looks good. The List There's a lot of things I want to do this summer. There's a lot of things I want to do always. And for some stupid reason I always give work the priority. And since I want to do so much, I end up having a lot of work. Regardless, here's a list of things I could do over the summer. There's no priority here. Hopefully I'll actually do some of them.

1. Read more. Like creative reading. Not always practical reading.
2. Write more. This is a start. But like serious creative writing, not just blogging.
3. CTFO. I gotta stress less. Less stressin' = less depressin'.
4. Get next stable release of Layout Ultimate out. We've just got bugfixes to do with 7v7.
5. Leave prizes in public places. It makes the world more like a videogame.
6. Design a large-scale puzzle adventure. This could take some serious time.
7. Ultimate sometimes. Because it's fun.
8. UGMO site redesign. Make it teh cool.

There's probably more. Oh well.

i think something snapped.

you think that it's a point. a point you reach where suddenly the stress and strain of life is too much. The realization that you have too much to do hits you. And something gives. You freak out, and... i don't know what. I don't know what because it hasn't really happened. Or rather it has happened. Or that i have no idea if it happened or not, but it certainly feels like it must have. i can't seriously work anymore. i've only recently been able to actually hold a clear mental focus for more than 10 minutes. Most of that is due to illness. I've been sick for the last week with what turns out to be a bacterial infection. I had a high fever, and it is to blame for most of what's been messing with my head. You stop walking and ask yourself why you're in the kitchen, and subsequently why you were walking. And then you remember you have to pee and you meant to go to the bathroom, but you walked to the kitchen instead. stupid fevers. but even before then i had no interest in working. The last time i worked furiously was for the code generation project on my compiler. A project which i tested the crap out of, only to discover 3 major flaws a week after the due date, when i worked on the next phase of the project. I think that's what broke my spirit. no matter how hard i worked the work will never be done. i'll just at some point stop working. and if that's my eventual action, why waste time now working when i'll just stop working later? i had two papers due this past tuesday. with the fever, i had absolutely nothing finished come the deadline. the professor called me and gave me a 2 day extension. It wasn't really enough time to do anything well, but it was enough time to get something done. and i did, again with the light at the end of the tunnel being that i could simply stop working again. and whatever grade i got was fine as long as it meant i didn't have to do that work again. and now all that is done. i have 2 finals on wednesday and thursday next week. and i haven't done any work studying for them. and i really really don't want to. dammit.

drop a hole

just so I can find this later. and so you can enjoy this now.

i've said it once before, but it bears repeating now.

this is an awesome music video. i finished my "technical writing" paper tonight. whoever knew how an ultimate disc flies could be so hard to explain. spring break is almost here. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

existentialism?

The only word I can describe for my philosophical sentiment right now is existential. But I'm not even sure if that's the right word. As of the beginning of last week, I had a midterm paper due tomorrow. As of the end of last week, I had a draft of a midterm paper due tomorrow. I know if I had a fully written out paper that this peer review session would be substantially beneficial. And I've been trying to crank this thing out for the last 2 days. But to no avail. I have 1 page written. 1 of 6. Partially, I don't feel pressed because I know it's really due Thursday. Mostly, I can't get motivated for this paper because I've been researching the physics of an ultimate disc in flight for the last month, and it's just not an enduring topic. Additionally, there's many an aspect of my life that's falling apart right now, although it's at the "this just means a whole lot of work for me" stage rather than the "oh shit, I'm not going to be able to handle this" stage. Finally, I've come to realize how ultimately unimportant completing this paper is relative to all my other responsibilities. It's hard to focus on something you know doesn't matter at all when you've got so much that actually does matter on your mind. But i'm back to trying anyway...

what a weekend

This weekend was crazy fun. But it's over too soon. Friday I had dinner with the girls at the Ultimate Love Shack. Apparently corned beef is a traditional dish for St. Patrick's Day. And I forgot to wear green. I'm a wonderful 25% irish man. After dinner the party dwindled down to a select few: Vapor, Squirt, Gretchen, Scott, Mindi, and myself. We played Harry Potter Uno while drinking a party pack of Smirnoff Ice (and the occasional shot of vodka). Vapor won because she's sneaky like that and she clearly should have been taking shots with us. We then watched Hot Dog, an 80's movie about freestyle skiing with a playboy playmate succinctly described as "80's soft porn" by Vapor & Squirt. I don't remember much about the movie, as we were fairly drunk and spent most of the movie talking to one another on the couch. I sat between Vapor & Squirt, so double points to me. Then I woke up at about 10 on Saturday, finished my compiler project by noon, hit up a prospective house for next year at noon-thirty (the housing situation is messed up. i'll talk about it more later), then had practice, went to Scotts in Jack London for my dad's bday. When we got back, I went to a PhotoClub party with Courtney. Today was mostly spent recovering. There was an ultimate meeting discussing the roles people will play next year. The future looks good. I really felt comfortable with these girls, it was a nice change from both the being around a large group of guys and the feeling like I must force conversation with attractive girls. As such, things got quite "cozy" on the couch. I definitely had my arms around both Vapor and Squirt for most of the evening, although while Squirt thuroughly enjoyed it, i think Vapor was just putting up with it. (I don't know how to feel about Squirt. She definitely enjoyed me holding her and I certainly enjoyed her wrapping her arm around me and playing with my hair. The real truth is that I do still like her, but I have the distinct feeling that if I just keep pursuing her it'll all just be a big tease. Especially given the theory that she has yet another out-of-town boyfriend named Adam (who called that night too). I have a feeling if I keep after Squirt it can lead to nothing but disaster, but it's still better than nothing. I'm also afraid my getting cozy with her might have made Vapor feel weird (she doesn't want to hang with us this thursday because she's "lame", and "busy" but not because of "work". could be totally unrelated or totally related). It's a complicated situation) I really wish I had someone to talk to about this. It feels like I should talk to Scott about this but I can't share personal things with him without him branching into random tangents about his own mistrials with girls within like 100s of our conversation. Believe me, I've tried. But i'm le tired.

All those times

I'm about a day behind on my semantic analyzer project. But I'm halfway through the semester and this is the hardest part, so I figure this might be one of the projects I turn in a day late without penalty. It's pretty crazy stuff. I think my problem in life is that I really don't know what I want. There's a distinct desire for a lasting, meaningful relationship like so many I had in high school when we were too timid to do anything really sexual. But then I see a picture of a topless girl, or a girl in her underwear, or even just a hot girl giving a seductive look. And I remember all those times... All the times my hands warmed hers. All the times I closed my eyes and kissed her softly. All those times I kissed from her lips to her collarbone. All the times she sucked on my neck and chest and gave me a hickey. All the the times I undid her bra and licked her nipples while the scruff that had grown on my chin since i shaved that morning scratched her tender breast. All the times I ended up on top even though I preferred the bottom. All the times I actually forgot about the world around me, forgot about myself, and only cared about making someone else feel good. That's really, deep down, what I miss the most: someone to care about that takes precedence over everything. Without it, I just get involved in my work, i devote ridiculous amounts of time to things like Ultimate Frisbee and personal sideprojects, and I just keep busy. Work is my alternative to Happiness. A few months ago I met a girl named Leslie at an Ultimate party. We had both had a lot to drink before we met. We talked continuously since we met, and we were one of the last few to leave the party come 3am. I was genuinely interested in her despite the fact that she told me she had a boyfriend she was planning on breaking up with once that semester was over. I offered to walk her home, but the walk went by my house and she had to use the restroom, so we stopped at my place. Then she didn't want to leave. So we managed to scrunch onto my twin mattress and we talked until we fell asleep. We never did anything (she spoke to herself aloud saying how she was resisting the temptation to do things with me because she still had a boyfriend, even if he did cheat on her. My solution was to let her make a move if she wanted it, and as such, no move was made) We went on a date a week later, suffice to say, she wanted time to be single. And that ended that. I figure if I really wanted a one-night hookup that could have been it. If I really wanted a relationship I wouldn't've brought her back to my place. Either way, my heart vs my libido is proving to be a rather well-matched fight. And I've since come to the conclusion that I'm only drunk girls find me attractive. (Which is a bit biased, because I only meet girls at parties, and most of those girls are, or eventually end up being, drunk)

brainwander

I heard "The Rock Show" today and it made me think of high school dances. Where that song would come on, everyone would yell for like 4 seconds, then everyone would shout the words as they bounced up and down and called it dancing. I liked dancing. I got a little crazy, and when the Matrix fad hit the nation I invented a dance move based on the Bullet Dodge slow-mo scene. In sync with the music I would flail my arms and arc my back until I got as low as possible, then I would catch myself with one hand, and in a smooth motion I would push off the ground and be back on my feet. I loved that move. Once I did it without looking behind me, and my head hit the back of some girls ankles. My friends teased me about getting a look up her skirt, but I didn't see anything. One of the ones who teased me about it was Stephanie. I knew her from way back in 7th grade. She was pretty cool, I had a crush on her at one point and I would hang out with her after school telling my parents I was going to the library. I was caught one night because I lost track of time and came home after sunset. That's when I started wearing a watch. I could never figure out which wrist to put it on, though. I'd think "I'm right handed: I should put it on my right". But then I couldn't simultaneously use my right hand (to write, for instance) and simultaneously look at the time. So I ended up strapping it tightly to my left wrist, because I couldn't stand it being lose and spinning around on my wrist. I developed a horrible wristwatch tan and the nickname Clock Boy. At some point later in junior high (I'd guess 8th grade), Stephanie's life began going crazy. She claimed to have married AJ McClean from the Backstreet Boys in an internet chatroom. Nobody believed her, but she called herself Stephanie McClean. After that died down, she met some other guy over the internet, a high-school senior named Nick. Nobody ever met him, although she would IM us a school photo of the boy she claimed to be dating. Nobody ever saw a picture of them together. Then, when their relationship went sour, he became obsessive and controlling. She had broken up with him, but he wasn't about ready to leave, and he would show up at her house uninvited. One night she IM'd me asking for help -- he had hacked into her Hotmail account and couldn't get it back. It wasn't that bad of a hack: it seemed he had just figured out her password. It was hard to use Hotmail because, at the time, you couldn't have 2 computers logged into the same account at one time, so everytime I logged on I kicked Nick out, and vice versa. It took about 30 minutes of trying before I knew where to click fast enough to log in and change her password before he logged in and kicked me out again. But that's the only proof he existed. Which could have easily been her fucking with us. I have no idea what happened to her.

Love Cups!

MIT labs has done great research in the ability to find practical applications for finding some reason the most obtuse device in your house needs to be connected to the internet. Most recently, they've developed pairs of wi-fi cups that glow with greater intensity when the other half of the pair is drinking. My first reaction was: Holy crap. What a waste of time. But the analysis says that it really helps keep the spark going in long-distance relationships and with people who just don't get out often enough. Which I can kind of believe. If everytime my sippycup glowed I knew someone I cared about was thinking about me, it would make me feel good. And honestly how could you not be self-consious about thinking of your other half while drinking a cup that's going to make their cupboard glow red? But what about those who don't have a romantic other in their life, short- or long-distance? Well, I've got a great idea: Set 2 people up by giving each of them one of a pair of these cups. Only you will know who's drinking out of the other glass! And then they'll think they have a secret admirer off drinking somewhere and thinking of them! It'll be great. I swear, if I ever got one of those mugs, I'd probably just drink out of it all the time. Although it'd be disappointing if mine never lit up.

I hate roommates

I always get the short end of the stick for roommates. It sucks. My current roommate has a girlfriend, which for the past two semesters he's been living with. Which means that each of myself and 2 other guys got a single. And it was good. But goddammit if they didn't get into another loud fight that caused her to get evicted and to make him move back in with us. In all honesty it's probably healthier for everyone if they would break up and stay that way for more than a few hours, but for whatever reason they stay together. But really that's none of my business and it's the least of my concerns with him as a roommate. He's just plain out totally inconsiderate of everyone in the house. He leaves dirty dishes in the sink for weeks with no intention to clean them unless I tell him to. And the only reason I'm stuck telling him to is because I'm the one that actually shares a room with him. Which also means I'm the one that bears the grunt of most of his inconsider-icies. I can't work in my room now. Because he either comes home when i'm working and will watch some movie with loud volume with total disregard for what I was doing. Or he'll sleep until freakin 3pm so I can't listen to music and work while awake. I can't stand this. How can someone be so out of touch from normal social interaction. GAAHAHH that is all

Let's delay our misery

Holy crap. The last 48+ hours have been a dizzy blur. And I thought I'd be done by midnight tonight, but it would appear the pain train is just beginnin to roll. Here's a quick-action rundown of what happened. Pretend like these words are coming at you like they do when Batman punches someone. And that someone is a henchmen. And they're all me. BLAM! E190 oral presentation on Thursday, it went well, but I was prepared for that since Tuesday. SMACK! E190 Memo due I actually didn't finish and had to get an extension on. It's now due Monday. KA-POW! E195 reading that I'm like a week and a half behind on. ARRGHH! AI homework was ridiculously hard. I got it done a few hours before it was due, at the cost of hanging with Courtney and Anna. BOOM! AI project done 15 minutes before midnight, and only then do I realize that I totally missed my Friday. um..pop? I've got an AI midterm on Tuesday. And a shitload of learning to do before then. shazzam. I need an outline of all my E190 research written by Tuesday. And I hardly had enough material for a 5-minute presentation. oh, snap! Turns out my Compilers project has a checkpoint on Tuesday as well. Who knew? woohoo! 2 Google interviews on Wednesday with the Payments group. word. swoosh! Another midterm Thursday. Culture of Science style. I gotta get my read on. splat! Compilers written assignment due Thursday. wha? Ultimate party on Friday. You'd think this would be a good thing, but I doubt it. ... I'm sure there's more ahead i'm still unaware of. On the other hand, I did get a lot of Broken Social Scene. They rock. And they're good to study to. that is all.